Rogers: No Hill briefing since 2011

House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers on Tuesday said that Congress hadn’t heard from the Obama administration since 2011 on the possibility of a prisoner swap with the Taliban.

The Michigan Republican also cast doubt on the administration’s claims that it had to act due to Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl’s health, saying, “Their public rhetoric does not match the facts on the ground.”

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President Barack Obama, speaking in Poland earlier Tuesday morning, said administration officials “have consulted with Congress for quite some time” about the possibility of a prisoner exchange.

But Rogers, appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe,” said Congress hadn’t heard anything from the White House in years and that the administration only informed them of the deal after it had already taken place.

“I don’t know what he means by consulted Congress for some time,” Rogers said in response to Obama’s comments. “In 2011, they did come up and present a plan that included a prisoner transfer that was, in a bipartisan way, pushed back. We hadn’t heard anything since on any details of any prisoner exchange.”

He said that administration officials met with the relevant national security committees in 2011 to discuss the potential freeing of some U.S. prisoners as an act of “goodwill,” which the lawmakers resoundingly rejected. He said that the only thing Congress had seen since 2011 concerning Bergdahl was a proof of life video released in December 2013.

In his press conference in Poland, the president defended the deal and reiterated his administration’s concerns about the soldier’s health, saying: “We saw an opportunity, we were concerned about Sgt. Bergdahl’s health … and we seized that opportunity.”

But Rogers said he thought this justification — that the administration needed to bypass Congress because of the urgency of the situation and Bergdahl’s rapidly declining health — was false.

“At least their public rhetoric does not match the facts on the ground,” he said. “This notion that it was an acute health care — yesterday, we were informed that it wasn’t acute, they had no information that it was acute, I don’t know why you would say that. They said we had to work within a few days of notice — we understand that this happened weeks ago.”

Obama said he was honoring a “sacred rule” to bring back all soldiers from battle. “Regardless of the circumstances, whatever those circumstances may turn out to be, we still get an American soldier back if he’s held in captivity,” Obama said. “Period. Full stop. We don’t condition that.”

Rogers, though, said that the administration did not make the right decision on the release, saying “the methodology is important.”

“Not in this case, no,” he said when asked about whether the U.S. did the right thing. “Absolutely not. The methodology is important here. I almost wish the administration would just stop talking about it and come up and meet their members of Congress and introduce themselves to the national security committees who do this work every day. That would be a good start.”

Appearing on CNN on Sunday, Rogers also criticized the deal, saying the agreement sets a dangerous precedent about negotiating with hostage-takers and that the U.S. has “set a price” for diplomats and soldiers.

Sen. John McCain also said that Congress had not been adequately briefed on the issue.

The Arizona Republican and Senate Armed Services Committee member said Tuesday on CNN that, when he was last briefed by administration officials, they floated a plan very different from the one this weekend.

“We were never told that there would be an exchange of Sgt. Bergdahl for five Taliban. We were told they were considering — and we steadfastly, both Republicans and Democrats, rejected the notion —that they were going to release some of these Taliban in exchange for ‘confidence-building measures’ so that negotiations could continue,” he said. “What we were briefed on was an entirely different scenario from the one that took place.”

McCain didn’t say when that meeting took place, but a McCain aide later told POLITICO that the last briefing McCain participated in concerning Bergdahl took place two years ago.

The senator, though, reiterated that his chief concern was not congressional authority but the release of the five Taliban operatives “which could put the lives of American service men and women in grave danger for the future.”